Remember SpiralFrog, a new music service that will offer free downloads? It is not quite ready yet but is now in beta and should expected to make its debut in early 2007. Rather than selling songs, the company will use an advertising-based model to make money. Essentially, a user would need to watch some ads prior to downloading a song. To maintain active licenses on songs, regular visits to the site would also be required (more ad watching). Unfortunately, users will not be able to burn the songs to CD or to transfer them to iPods (and presumably other DAPs).
Universal Music Group and a number of independent labels have signed on already.
SpiralFrog is an interesting idea but I’m not sure it will fly. Not being able to transfer songs to mobile devices will be a big limitation. Or perhaps their web site will support mobile devices.